I’ve seen these flooded on this site and I thought may as well do it. If someone could estimate/rank my chances of being admitted to Harvard (honesty please) I would be grateful
About me:
New Zealander.
Had a bit of hardship: 2 medical issues (glaucoma and second was an infection which has/will impact me life-long)
Aspiring lawyer (planning to study economics first) and I want to be PM of my country one day.
ECs:
Languages. Self-taught myself Russian, which was recognised by a competition (first in NZ) and the national Newspaper did an article about. Also learnt Spanish for 8 years. Japanese for four years. I’ve taken up French this year and I’m apart of the new French club at school. (I only take Spanish at school)
Writer. Publishing a few fictional books this year.
founded an organisation providing tutoring. Don’t really wanna go too much into this online, but basically helping kids in poorer neighbourhoods.
Involved with UN Youth. Went to the model regional event and also doing the diplomacy competition. Joining the UN Youth Club that is just being started at my school.
in 2008 (I was 8) I was recognised by the NZ Green Party & the Greenpeace branch for my protest against whaling. I’ve done small conservational work since.
Grades:
We don’t have a GPA here, we have to get it converted so I don’t know what it is right now. But I think my grades will near 4 unweighted.
at my public school, people usually take 5 subjects whilst I’m taking 7.
doing a special examination called Scholarship. Also doing a University-provided economics exam.
Planning to get at least above 1500 SAT. My reading/writing should be perfect (It’s my strong suit) but my mathematics is something I will have to teach myself (I take statistics, not the calculus path).
I always think that anything is possible and that it all depends on how hard you try for it, but due to financial costs, I do need to be realistic and consider if it is worth applying to Ivies. There is zilch information here about Ivies but I’ve been gifted with a new school career counsellor who is so supportive. So, what do you think?
You seem like a wonderful applicant, as are most students who will ultimately be rejected. As Harvard receives more qualified applications than they have seats in their freshman class, Admissions uses a student’s teacher recommendations, guidance counselor’s Secondary School Report (SSR), Essays and Interview Report to choose one high performing student over another. They look for wonderful scholars of “good character” – that’s an old fashioned word meaning the way you develop your inner qualities, intellectual passion, maturity, social conscience, concern for community, tolerance, inclusiveness and love of learning. And none of those qualities can be gleaned from a post like yours.
FWIW: International applicants do NOT have the same odds as US applicants. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and MIT (among other colleges) limit the number of international students to about 10% to 11% of an incoming freshman class – and most of those international students are from 6 countries: Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, China, Korean and Japan. Go to http://www.hio.harvard.edu/statistics. From the pull-down menus, select STUDENTS, HARVARD COLLEGE (the undergraduate school) and NEW ZEALAND, you’ll see that there are 13 students from New Zealand enrolled at Harvard who are freshman, sophomores, juniors or seniors. That means, on average, Harvard admits about 3-4 students from New Zealand every year. I imagine that Yale, UPenn and Northwestern (as well as Princeton, Stanford and the rest of the ivies) admit about the same.
Harvard doesn’t publish the number of applicants from each country, but I imagine Admissions looks for the “best of the best” from each country. Are you one of the best students from New Zealand? From your stats, I have no idea, but if you are a top student your teachers will know, and they will certainly mention that fact in their letters of recommendation. Ditto with your guidance counselor. Best of luck to you!
I bet your odds are higher than an American student with better scores and grades. Your “hook” is being from New Zealand. Demonstrate that you can do the work and I think your chances greatly increase. I think you will have to fill some of the extracurricular buckets. In the US, it’s so important for people to be doing interesting things outside of the classroom.
Not a hook. As @gibby correctly points out, the chances for admissions are less for an international applicant. While Harvard does not publicly quantify acceptance rates for internationals, either as a group or by country, its peer down the street does. The acceptance rate for internationals there is less than half the overall rate. http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats
I see no reason for it to be dramatically different at Harvard. And certainly, IMO, Harvard is not going to admit a student from any country with lesser scores simply to put another flag on the map.
You appear to be a qualified candidate however it is impossible to chance for a school that has an acceptance rate of under 5%. There is simply not enough room to accept all of the well qualified applicants.
@Happytimes2001 Hi, thanks for your response. Can you clarify what you mean by “I think you will have to fill some of the extracurricular buckets”? Do you think I need more?
Thanks for your responses. Honestly, I originally thought my nationality would at least give them a double-take, but after reading some of the forums I believe that’s not the case. And that’s fine, I can deal with it, I’ll hopefully have other things to edge my application.
I’m also well aware of the fact that schools such as Harvard have extremely low acceptance rates and I think that adds to the prestigiousness of them. I also understand that asking for a ‘chances’ thing isn’t really the best determiner for what might actually happen with Admissions, but I think I’ll just go for it and apply and see what happens.
I’m not sure I necessarily agree, but I will point a couple of things out:
No US college will care about ECs prior to HS.
Just be aware that polyglots are not unique, although certainly more rare from countries where English is the official language. Also, you need to be careful with academic ECs so the college does not think you are one-dimensional.
This might be OK. Nobody can tell based on this sentence, but be aware that publishing something via a vanity press may be viewed differently than having a book published by an established publishing house.
@skieurope Thanks for your response. I’ll remove the ecs before HS. Polyglots are quite rare in my country. In fact, my Spanish ‘class’ is done online because there is not a physical teacher/class for me - my Principal was persuading me to not take it but I really love learning it. About being one dimensional, I haven’t been able to take sports up (since Primary, anyway) because of my surgeries. Do you have any suggestions for ECs that would make my application more dimensional?
I’ve said this on other threads, but it bears repeating here: As a general statement, one should do an EC for enjoyment, skill development, team development, or any number of other reasons other than trying to impress college admissions teams. The specifics of which ECs are up to you.
@skieurope I strongly believe that too. It’s nearly four in the morning and I’ve just realised an EC I forgot to add here (I’m a part of the “junior” version of a political party) but I will brainstorm a few ideas for ECs later. Thanks again for your response, it’s been very helpful.
@skieurope Having worked with several international schools, ranging from England, to Dubai, Moscow and Tokyo, I’ll disagree. I’d say a student from New Zealand would be admitted over a US candidate with similar qualifications. Harvard wants international students and spends a fortune recruiting them. In the case of the UK, students were routinely admitted with lower “stats” than their US rivals. When this was raised with the regional admissions officer, she said UK students brought a special dimension to campus.
New Zealand sends comparatively few students to Harvard. A strong candidate, especially one with special circumstances, would be viewed sympathetically.
Though the OP is long gone the same question from international applicants comes up often. The conventional wisdom on CC seems to be the acceptance rate is much lower for internationals, like half the overall rate. But I think that exlibris97 is probably right—it varies a great deal from country to county. In places like UK and Japan I speculate there are very few students interested in Harvard to begin with. It sort of makes sense—why spend $75000 yr for Harvard while you can have Oxford/Cambridge for $15000. Anecdotally, I know an unhooked kid from UK this year who was admitted to Harvard with a score of ACT equivalent of 25. Though the kid’s EC is exceptional I cannot imagine he would be admitted to any top 30 school if he were a US student regardless of hooked status.
Of course, on the other end of the spectrum are countries like China, where there were only 7 (Chinese citizens living in China) admits among 5000+ applicants who would all have ACTs greater than 25.
So, realistically, there cannot be a cookie cutter answer like 2% for internationals because it can vary from 0.1% to 99% depending on the country.
A country like NZ, with proportionately fewer apps, will have fewer admits. And if there happen to be a good number from there already on campus, maybe they won’t take more than one. It will shift annually.
On top of what ski noted, the med issues and career goals, taking 7 courses, and self predicting scores are not factors. Being on a stats path, rather than calculus can hinder, especially for econ.
There may be limited info in NZ, but you explore via the web, more than a forum or blog.
And you should be able to take your grades and find a way to convert them to a 4.0 scale or close enough.
Plenty of applications from the UK. And Japan. And native Asians with high scores. But just listing a score here doesn’t show why one anecdotal kid was admitted.
